How to Install and use FreeTube on Linux / macOS

In this guide, I’ll take you through How to Install and use FreeTube on Linux / macOS. FreeTube is an open source Desktop YouTube application that’s focused on privacy. FreeTube allows you to Watch your favorite YouTube videos without any normal ads you’ll get on browser applications like Firefox, Opera e.t.c.

How Does It Work?

FreeTube uses the YouTube API to search for videos and youtube-dl API to grab the raw video files and play them in a basic HTML5 video player, preventing being tracked with cookies or JavaScript. Subscriptions, history, and saved videos are stored locally on the user’s computer and are never sent out to anyone else. You own your data. This is the cool thing about FreeTube – privacy and security!.

Features of FreeTube

Freedom to watch videos without any annoying ads

You can subscribe to channels without an account

The power to store subscriptions, history, and saved videos locally

It can Import and Backup subscriptions

Mini Player based on HTML5

Light / Dark Theme to choose from

FreeTube is Available for Windows / Mac / Linux though still available in Beta version. It uses the proprietary YouTube HTTP API with Video URLs being resolved using a youtube-dl-api-server.

How to Install and use FreeTube on Linux / macOS

The first step is to download FreeTube on your Linux, MacOS or Windows machine and install it. Head to the FreeTube releases page. As of this writing, the latest release is 0.4.1 beta.

For CentOS / Fedora, download the .rpm package and install it with the command: